Matthew Milan
Matthew is a complex systems specialist with a focus on software innovation. He has degrees in Ski Area Management, Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Planning, and has spent most of his career helping organizations make concrete decisions about the future through the integration of strategic design and technology prototyping.
Matthew has spent the last decade at Normative leading teams on the fuzzy front end of emerging technologies. Along the way he’s discovered that when you work at the intersection of people and technology, change is the only constant. Dealing with ambiguity is what gets him up in the morning.
Matthew married with three children under 10 years old. They ski a lot.
For more, keep up with Matthew at normative.com or on Twitter as @mmilan.
Presentations
Leadership By Design 2017
Making Moonshots
A critical part of leadership is the reduction of ambiguity for your team. Your job is to make it clear, so the team can work towards the goals you’ve set. The reality is that many of the goals you’re setting are make-or-break for the future of your organization. If you work in a field like design or innovation, you’re probably already sick of hearing the word “moonshot.” Maybe you’ve even been part of one, or more likely, you’ve unwittingly part of many. As a leader, moonshots are part of the job.
There’s just one problem with the “moonshot” approach: the real moonshot wasn’t a single giant leap forward. It was a series of incremental experiments designed to test the riskiest parts of going to the moon, as soon as possible. This approach put humans on the moon within a decade of Kennedy’s famous speech, and it’s the same approach that the best innovators like Elon Musk use to get rapid traction on the hardest and most complex problems of our times.
This session will demystify complex, challenging “moonshot” initiatives and give you a set of principles and practices that you can use to wrestle the riskiest innovation challenges to the ground. You’ve already got the tools: research, prototyping, planning and production. Now, let’s help you to connect them together with the right questions and perspectives, getting the traction you need make innovation work practical and successful.
